Lesson Plans, Curriculums, and Supplies...Oh My!

Homeschooling is a lot of work. Really. I didn't realize how much would go into it when I started, but yeah...there is a lot.

Not only am I trying to get our "schedule" finished up, but I'm trying to get everything to correspond, at least slightly. I know throwing too many concepts and the little man at once is going to do nothing but cause confusion.

We got a silly workbook from Sam's awhile ago, but Ian loves those types of things (he found it and wanted to dive in, but I'm making him wait...mean Mommy). It is supposedly "all inclusive" and covers math, science, language, and social studies. I'm trying to organize myself so that he is doing a couple of pages from there with each subject, too, but it needs to "match" what he's working on in his curriculum. Sound confusing? It is.

The manipulatives for our Math U See program came in the mail yesterday. Ian calls them "the super cool blocks"; he loves them! I've been letting him play with them to get familiar with them before we start using them for his math next week. If nothing else, I'll be able to say the manipulatives are "super cool" when I write my Math U See review in a few months.

Today our Handwriting Without Tears is arriving, so I will be able to familiarize myself with that and get our lesson plans written up for next week. At this point it doesn't look like our Hooked on Phonics will be arriving until the 2nd, so next week will be a "review the alphabet" week as opposed to starting on the Phonics. I've learned an important lesson about ordering curriculum at the last minute: don't. Every other homeschooling mom does the same thing and the result is backordered items and long processing times. Oops.

Today we are heading to the library. I found a science book that I want to use for our lesson next week, "Under One Rock: Bugs, Slugs, And Other Ughs" and it's available--yay!

So our tentative schedule is this: Monday through Thursday we will start with a Bible Story (this week we are doing "creation"). Then we do math, handwriting, social studies, and phonics. There will be 45 minutes to an hour in there for snack and "recess", and the hope is to be done by noon for lunch and free time. Fridays are "off" days, but we will be doing science then. The reasoning for that is I really don't see how I can do four days of science with a 5-year-old, and also because a lot of the science activities we are going to do are outside. Since it is STILL 100 every.single.day in Texas, our only chance to get outside is in the morning. So Friday's have it. On the days we have an indoor science project, we will go to the park in the morning. Fridays will also be library day, so we have a chance to pick out some books that will help for the following week's lessons. And the hope is that I will blog about our "adventures" on Friday afternoons...we'll see. It's pretty obvious how disciplined I am when it comes to blogging!

So, this all looks great on paper. And I know it's not going to go as smoothly as I'm hoping. But at least for now, I am very excited and feeling very "yay homeschooling!".

I will try to put up pictures after our HWT stuff arrives today. At the very least, I will take some pictures.

Here We Go...

With the homeschooling! That's right, we made the big decision to homeschool this year. There were several factors that went into this decision. The main one is that kindergarten is now a full seven hours. My little boy, the one who JUST TURNED 5 six days ago, is expected to sit still from 8:30-3:30. My child does not even get out of bed until 8 (and this is with an 8:00 bedtime). The thought of getting him to school by 8:30 everyday and then to hope he sits in his chair when he gets there...terrifying. Seriously. Terrifying.

So, we decided to wait until he turns six to put him in kindergarten. We thought we would let him do another year of preschool, but guess what? The preschools don't want to take a five-year-old. They only want four-year-olds. The preschools that will take five-year-olds want to take half of our monthly income for the privelege (I might be exaggerating, but just a little). NOT schooling him in any form was not an option.

And so, this year, I am homeschooling. We may or may not continue it next year, it all depends on how this year goes. We live in a pretty good school district, so at least I don't have a crappy school to worry about if we decide against it next year.

Thankfully, I have a friend who started homeschooling her oldest last year (his birthday is one year after Ian's, but he was born the year before). She has given me tons of helpful tips, which has been great since I had no idea where to start.

I've chosen a few curriculums, with her help and advice. We will be using Hooked on Phonics, Handwriting Without Tears, and Math-U-See. We will be looking online for science and social studies activities that we can do. I just put in my final order today, so hopefully we can start schooling around September 1st. I'm going to The Teacher Store here in town to see if they have any kind of lesson plan organizers.

We will be starting each day with a Bible story, which is exciting and scary. I wasn't raised believing in God (we didn't necessarily NOT believe, but we didn't talk about it, we didn't read about Him, and we didn't go to church), so I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm still struggling with understanding everything myself, so to try and guide my child is a big task. I'm sure we'll BOTH learn quite a bit this year.

So wish me luck. I'll update as we move along, and give some reviews on the products we're using. I'm a little nervous, but I feel very confident that we can do this.